But defiant Corrie producers shrugged off the storm and vowed to continue the plot-line.

They even have plans to ramp up the ­romance between Todd ­Grimshaw and Marcus Dent.

An insider said: “The vast majority of the ­audience have no trouble with this. It’s real.”

Around 100 viewers complained to Ofcom with many furious that the love scene was ­aired before 8pm when children are watching. The explosive moment showed Todd (Bruno Langley, 30) lock lips with Marcus (Charlie Condou, 41) ­after chasing him for weeks.

After the full-on snog, the pair were shown heading semi-naked to the bedroom. It is part of an ongoing plot on the soap which has seen gay ex-City worker Todd ­return to the Street after two years and make a no-holds barred attempt to bag Marcus, who has been dating Maria Connor (Samia Ghadie, 31).

Most of the complainants say the gay kiss should not have been shown so early in the evening because it was too “sexually suggestive”, while others claim it had no place being ­broadcast at all. Some viewers also took to Twitter to express their outrage.

Brooke Kelly said: “Todd and ­Marcus was a bit full on for 8 o’clock on a Friday evening.” Hayley Edwards added: “Feel so awkward watching Corrie with my nan when Marcus and Todd are almost shagging.”

Wednesday, 26 February 2014

The London flat where serial killer Dennis Nilsen murdered and dismembered three victims is being sold by its new owner for a £100,000 profit.

Necrophile Nilsen had already murdered 12 men, most homeless homosexuals, when he moved to the Muswell Hill attic conversion in 1981.

It is believed he butchered at least three more at 23D Cranley Gardens, using his cooker to boil the skin off body parts which he hid in cupboards and under the floorboards. He was caught because of the stench of human flesh clogging up his drains...

Agents Day Morris and Barnard Marcus are marketing the flat but with no mention of its history. Richard Evans, from Day Morris, said he had not known he was selling Nilsen’s former home, adding: “In that case I've under-priced it. No, but seriously, we were unaware. I don’t see the importance of it — something that happened 25, 30 years ago.”

He called it a “very sweet” property: “It is a very nice top-floor flat with glorious views. It is ideal for one person.”

DULUTH, KS—Claiming it is “impossible” to get him to consider different points of view, exasperated acquaintances of local man Kyle Dunham told reporters Wednesday that the 34-year-old is completely unwilling to listen to even a single argument as to why homosexuality is an abomination.

Sources familiar with the account manager’s maddeningly rigid beliefs said that no matter how patiently and logically they present the extensive evidence demonstrating that gays and lesbians are systematically destroying society, the narrow-minded Dunham simply tunes them out.

“You try to have a rational conversation with him in which you carefully explain, point by point, how the Bible reveals that homosexuality is abhorrent and dangerous, and his eyes just glaze over,” said neighbor Alex Richardson, who told reporters he has never met anyone in his life so resistant to facts that contradicted his preconceived ideas. “Even when I bring up something basic that most informed people agree on—like how a man who lies down with another man is condemned to eternal hellfire—he just shakes his head.”

“I could spend all day calmly and methodically spelling out what befell the Sodomites,” Richardson added. “But it all goes in one ear and out the other.”

Apart from the fact this could be a counter-productive gesture, and Museveni would just say 'Bring it on!', this could prove difficult as the UK does not currently give the Ugandan government any aid.

“We ended all budget support payments to the Ugandan government last year. The UK strongly opposes all discrimination on any grounds and Justine Greening has been clear that governments receiving UK aid need to meet a specific set of principles, including human rights.”

Does anyone honestly think that Ms Harman could ever have been some kind of a cheerleader for child-abuse? Of course not. And if we don’t think that, and if we do think that it was through inattention that, as an officer of the National Council for Civil Liberties, she didn’t spot the unwisdom of a dodgy lobbying outfit’s association with the council, then for pity’s sake what’s all the ruckus about? But lacking further evidence against her, we rant at her “refusal to apologise”.

She was silly not to apologise, but can’t you understand her sense of righteous indignation that her reputation should be impugned by the suggestion that there might be something morally suspicious about her behaviour? Her anger at these newspaper attacks stung her into playing into the hands of her tormentors by trying to tough it out and take no notice.

Easy to say, though, after the event. Sometimes taking no notice works, and it’s difficult to say when the tactic will or won’t backfire. Being attacked by the Daily Mail is rather like being mobbed by bullocks when crossing a Derbyshire field. The standard advice is to take no notice but walk confidently through the herd, which, seeing you’re unafraid, will shrink back. And (the standard advice continues) if they do run at you, run back at them, preferably waving a stick. They’ll back off. Whatever you do (the advice concludes) don’t run away or, emboldened, they’ll run after and trample you.

Governments have always had a grubby habit of getting involved in their citizens' sex lives. But it is relatively new to see sexuality as part of foreign policy. In the past few months we have watched the peculiar spectacle of Russia and the United States transposing their geopolitical antagonisms onto a struggle over gay rights in Russia. Now, Ugandan leaders are using homophobia to pursue anti-imperialist politics, while Western leaders are painting their criticism of this as indicative of their concern for human rights. But neither posture is genuine. There are two truths in this sad tale: mutual hypocrisy and the victimisation of Uganda's LGBTQ community...

But sit back and watch as certain gay media and 'campaigners' now forget all about 'uncivilised' Russia, and start obsessing over 'backwards' Africa...These people don't play by our rules! etc etc.
Let's see how many pro-gay progressive voices from Africa are quoted.
Oh, and President Museveni doesn't give a hoot if you sign a silly online petition...

What's also worrying are the comments from Mr Museveni's spokesman when he made the announcement this morning [Monday]. The president, he disclosed, did not opt to quietly sign the bill over the weekend, while the world was distracted by the revolution in Ukraine. Instead, he wanted "the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

In other words, this is no longer just about gay rights, in Mr Museveni's view, but about the West lecturing an African country on how to run its internal affairs, in this case on a matter of sensitive sexual morality...

Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible. I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst. If MSNBC went off the air tomorrow, what difference would it make? If the Huffington Post went out of business tomorrow, what difference would it make? Arianna Huffington accomplished what she wanted to accomplish. She created this wonderful thing. And what have they done with that? They want clicks, I get it. They’ve gotta have clicks for their advertisers, so they’re going to need as much Kim Kardashian and wardrobe malfunctions as possible. The other day, they had a thing on the home page about pimples. Tripe. Liberal and conservative media are now precisely equivalent.

I’m aware that it’s ironic that I’m making this case in the media—but this is the last time I’m going to talk about my personal life in an American publication ever again.

From a very, very long open letter on Vulture by Alec Baldwin, following accusations of homophobia - or rather of using homophobic language - last year, "by Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice".

8 States have laws outlawing giving 'gay propaganda' to minors.Gay men are still being arrested for 'crimes against nature'.Gay adoption banned.It's legal to sack a worker for being gay in most states.

Chelsea Manning imprisoned for life.Gay teen suicides seem to never end.Queerbashing in New York is on the rise.The Westboro Baptist Church won't shut up.The Republican Party is in hock to anti-gay Evangelists.Radio talk shows are dominated by homophobic scum.Enough!We must make a stand.

Another day, another hoax. Every now and then a story comes along that gets everyone all fired up: A waitress receives a homophobic note in place of a tip; a president’s grandson comes out via Twitter; a lesbian claims she was denied hospital visitation rights. We go crazy, only to find later that we’ve been had. It was all a hoax.

There have been a number of gay hoaxes in the past year, and two this month alone. What’s up with this growing trend? And how many times will people cry wolf before we stop believing them?

Unfuckingbelievable.
How many times, indeed?
But these are just some of the many, many totally made-up stories the gay media has fallen for recently.
Here are some of Fagburn's favourites.
Maybe in future you dudes could actually try checking things you read on the internet?
You know, try to be a journalist, not a credulous fool.
Just a thought.

Simon Lokodo cannot imagine kissing a man. "I think I shall die," he said last week. "I would not exist. It is inhuman. I would be mad. Just imagine eating your faeces."

Lokodo is "ethics and integrity" minister in Uganda and a champion of the country's swingeing anti-homosexuality bill, which looked set to become law on Sunday until President Yoweri Museveni halted it, pending scientific advice. The delay was a small victory for activists dismayed a week ago when Museveni insisted that he would approve the legislation. That news prompted Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to tweet: "In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British colonial ban."

In 140 characters, Roth encapsulated a broad sweep of history and geography and one of the central paradoxes of Africa's new war on gay and lesbian people. It is a war marked by political opportunism, biblical fundamentalism and a clash between cultural relativism and universal human rights. But it is also a measure of conservatives' anxiety that every day more and more African homosexuals are coming out and losing their fear. Western liberals eager to see the best in Africa must face an inconvenient truth: this is the most homophobic continent on Earth. Same-sex relations are illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries, according to Amnesty International, and punishable by death in some states. Now a fresh crackdown is under way.

Though its main thrust - that African homophobia is a legacy of Western colonialism, that's now being stirred up by American evangelical Christians - is simplistic and has become a media trope/truism.For they are but passive agents, and all they have was given by us?

Further, it seems odd, cruelly ironic and rather insulting, that David Smith does not interview any LGBT Africans.

They do exist, and are campaigning in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda... *

Why are they not allowed a voice, why can they not speak for themselves?

Smith does however talk to that well-known self-appointed expert on Africa, and indeed on all things gay, Peter Tatchell.

It seems the colonial mindset still has quite a hold.

'The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards' - Frantz Fanon.

Thousands of people with HIV have been left struggling in poverty by the Government's welfare reforms – with some unable to afford the basic food they need to fight their condition.

The situation is now so critical that in some cases doctors are having to prescribe food supplements to ensure that patients' medication works, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

A national hardship fund for people with HIV/Aids, run by the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), registered a 63 per cent increase last year in those needing emergency help because their benefits had been stopped.

HIV experts described the situation as "truly alarming", saying it was "nothing short of a disgrace" that seriously ill patients in modern Britain were having their treatments compromised by hunger. HIV medication can be less effective if taken without food.

Changes to sickness benefits introduced by the coalition – alongside other welfare reforms such as the so-called bedroom tax – have left many HIV patients significantly worse off.

Stringent criteria for employment support allowance, assessed by the now notorious Atos Healthcare, means that many have been moved off sickness benefits altogether. The replacement of the disability living allowance with the personal independence payment is also affecting growing numbers...

This is in the IoS, so might be hyped up for the usual reasons.
Doesn't help that the only personal account they highlight is a woman complaining that she can't afford to shop at Waitrose anymore.
But it fits my narrow agenda, so... whatever.

Persistent death threats against staff who decide whether sick and disabled people are eligible for benefits have forced the private company employing them to seek an early exit from a £500m government contract.With opposition Labour MPs also stepping up criticism, Atos Healthcare said the political environment had become untenable and that it was no longer fair to employees to leave them vulnerable to attack...

Now, after two decades in the economic basket, Russia is decisively back as an ideological force in the world — this time as a champion of conservative values. In his annual state of the nation speech to Russia’s parliament in December, Vladimir Putin assured conservatives around the world that Russia was ready and willing to stand up for ‘family values’ against a tide of liberal, western, pro-gay propaganda ‘that asks us to accept without question the equality of good and evil’. Russia, he promised, will ‘defend traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years’. Crucially, Putin made it clear that his message was directed not only at Russians — who have already been protected from ‘promotion of non-traditional relationships’ by recent legislation — but for ‘more and more people across the world who support our position’.

He's on to something...

A pot pourri of conspiracy theory, conjecture, nonsense and non sequiturs in that noted champion of gay rights, The Spectator.
Luckily there are no right-wing New Cold Warriors in the West that ab/use the LGBT community as a soft power play.
Like by cherry-picking which countries to criticise and demonise over how they treat gay people, for example.

"We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance."In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship."

“For all the time spent writing songs, I sometimes wish I’d spent at least a quarter of that playing sports or climbing mountains, developing more of a physique. Being a gay man and hitting 40, I’ve woken up immediately to the fact of, ‘oh my God, I’m no longer this fresh-faced blushing rose’. And now I gotta get steroids!”

People who wrestle with megalomania, as I do, see two people in the mirror. Depending on the day, I see myself as a 17-year-old supermodel mixed with a bit of Beethoven genius, or a disgusting 65-year-old dilettante with delusions of grandeur. Of course, in reality, I am somewhere in the middle.

Porn magnate and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activist Michael Lucas is dead set on showing the world just how terrible it is to be gay in his native country.

"I want to bring attention to what is happening in Russia and I want the conversation to last longer than the span of the [Sochi] Olympics," the Moscow-born Lucas, CEO and founder of New York's largest gay adult film company, Lucas Entertainment, told The Huffington Post via email this week. "There was a lot of attention prior to the games, and that attention must continue. The world has seen bits and pieces, but we don't have the full picture of what the LGBT community in Russia is like, and what it is going through."

Under the invisible camera, my husband and I were forced to think twice before showing affection. Would a squeeze of his arm - combined with my hat that read HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST SOCHI EQUALITY - be interpreted as propaganda? Oh, and in Russia, asking for a single bed in a hotel is most definitely a thing. Did that clerk just raise his eyebrows? Maybe he set off an alarm that rings in the Kremlin!
Bit of a classic this one - after spending five (5) days at Sochi, Mr Gaylord now considers himself an expert on Russia.

Exactly what’s going on here? In the last few days, reading these and other peculiarly docile pieces in various left-leaning Western media – media which, until recently, could be fairly described as having been on the warpath over Putin’s assault on gays – one wondered whether some of that good old-fashioned Soviet-era Western-progressive “understanding” of Kremlin brutality had, all these years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, finally kicked back into gear. No, Russia is no longer officially Communist – but under Putin it’s close enough, perhaps, to set off the old acceptance, among leftist journalists and gay-left activists alike, of the need to break a few eggs to make an omelet...
Erm, I'm pretty sure The Guardian has only published one article questioning the current climate of hysteria.

Gay people and the city have been a good match since Sodom and Gomorrah. From the molly houses of 18th-century London to 1970s San Francisco via prewar Berlin, the urban environment has always been the natural habitat of queer culture – a place where LGBT people can set their own rules, form their own families, be anonymous when they want to and find company when they fancy it. The countryside, on the other hand, is the place they escape from – a realm of social conformity with limited opportunities for culture, sex or socialising, and perhaps even a site of danger.That's the stereotype, anyway, both in reality and on screen. Innumerable movies with claims to gay-classic status are inseparable from their urban settings: London has Victim, My Beautiful Laundrette and Beautiful Thing; New York has The Boys in the Band, Paris Is Burning and Torch Song Trilogy; Berlin has Cabaret and Taxi zum Klo; Philadelphia has, erm,Philadelphia. On TV, Queer as Folk was all about Manchester in its original UK incarnation and Pittsburgh in the US remake, while San Francisco is the setting for both new HBO show Looking and the literary adaptation whose title says it all, Tales of the City.

Leave town and things get less comfortable. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is wholly structured around the idea of gay people in the country as fish out of water, its basically feelgood vibe laced with moments of real macho menace directed at our drag-queen heroines. Brokeback Mountain made icons of its repressed rural protagonists, men whose inability to articulate their desires even to themselves doomed them to lives of regret...